


Rotten Miracles

by ryry_peaches



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [7]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Movie Night, Pre-Relationship, The Princess Bride References, file under: stevie never helps (except when she does), they're there but they aren't important tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: Pre-Grad Night, David and Stevie join Patrick for a movie night.  The plot is a thinly veiled frame for lots of yearning.-David leans against the counter, supporting himself on both hands as he lets his shoulders slump.  It's nearly closing time, and this conversation is ridiculous, but he feels comfortable.  The store has only been open for a little over a week, but the three of them have spent so much time in this space together that it feels natural, standing at the counter and getting harrassed by the two of them.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735951
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87





	Rotten Miracles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storieswelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/gifts).



> Requested on tumblr by storieswelove, who is always supportive, sweet, and ready to yell with me about David's neurodivergence being basically canon.
> 
> Title from The Princess Bride, which is one of my favorite movies because I'm basic, and which i chose because once I got the idea of a movie night in my head, I had to pick something that fills me with lovely memories with people I love - like the memory David, Stevie, and Patrick make here. THAT SAID, you really do not have to like or have seen the movie to read this.

"What do you mean you've never seen The Princess Bride?" Patrick mock-glares at David, then turns to Stevie. "Did you know about this?"

Stevie shrugs, and the look on her face tells David that she cares less about the actual fact that he's never seen the movie than she does about bothering him to death. "I can't say it's ever come up, but I naturally assumed he had."

David leans against the counter, supporting himself on both hands as he lets his shoulders slump. It's nearly closing time, and this conversation is ridiculous, but he feels comfortable. The store has only been open for a little over a week, but the three of them have spent so much time in this space together that it feels natural, standing at the counter and getting harrassed by the two of them.

"David, you have to watch it. I can loan you my copy —" Patrick actually does seem invested in this, which David, God help him, finds endearing.

"There's no DVD player in my room," he says, engaging because Patrick's eyes are sparkling, and he's got his top two buttons undone, and no undershirt on, and when he gestures, the shirt gapes a little too wide, giving David a glimpse of collarbone.

And because Alexis and Stevie have hooked David on the idea that maybe Patrick might be…not totally straight. And not totally not into David. He's helpless to the _maybe_ of it all.

Which is why, when Patrick says, "Well, Ray's not home tonight, why don't we have a little watch party?" David finds himself agreeing.

Stevie agrees too, when David shoots her a sharp glance, and if Patrick has any reaction to that, he doesn't show it. But Stevie is, despite all her and David's constant bickering and blustering, an excellent friend, and she understands without him having to say a word that watching a movie together, alone, on Ray's awful floral couch, lights off, probably a bottle of wine open…it would destroy him.

"Great," is all Patrick says. "I have a thing after we close, but you guys can come by at like eight? I'll make Jiffy Pop."

There it is. Already. The very idea of Patrick standing at the stove making popcorn the old-fashioned way is enough to make David want to bury his face in his hands and squeal. This is why he needs Stevie.

"You're my buffer," David explains to Stevie on the drive over. He's got two packs of brand-x licorice, because the single sad convenience store in Schitt's Creek actually can't afford to sell name brands, and a bottle of wine he pilfered from his mom's stash before they left.

"I don't think he's planning to sleep with you tonight," Stevie says mildly.

"My emotional buffer." He curls one leg up, putting his heel on the seat of Stevie's passenger seat. "Because I really like him, and I don't — if I'm left alone with him, like that, I'll definitely say something stupid and ruin our friendship, and then he'll pull out of our contracts and I'll run my business into the ground and be back to only having one friend."

Stevie snorts indelicately. "Who's saying I wouldn't take Patrick's side in the divorce?"

He ignores her, watching out the windshield as they pull into Ray's driveway.

Patrick greets them at the door and leads them to the kitchen to pour the wine; David stands at the counter and observes that Patrick actually has made Jiffy Pop. Something about it seems weirdly nostalgic to David, despite the fact that he himself had a professional popcorn machine growing up, and it makes him ache in a way he doesn't want to poke too closely. This is probably a relic of Patrick's growing up. David can almost picture tiny Patrick, standing on a chair to reach the stove and observing the foil rising into a ball for him.

While David has been lost to this thought, Patrick has found three stemless wine glasses and poured the wine. Stevie unearths a big bowl from the depths of Ray's cupboards for the popcorn, and together the three of them troop to the living room.

It's so much worse than David could have imagined.

There's just the couch — there's an armchair, but it's beside the TV rather than pointed at it, and there's nowhere to move it to. They'll have to share the couch, which has a horribly ugly, probably handmade and supremely cozy-looking afghan draped over it.

Stevie and Patrick claim the ends of the couch, leaving the middle for David, which is reasonable — they're both better friends with him than they are with each other, and it's the first time David has experienced that dynamic in his life — and a nightmare, because now he has to sit beside Patrick.

Patrick is unbothered, because it's normal to sit squished on a couch with someone you only consider a friend. Or because he's just completely unflappable; thus far, David has yet to see him express emotions outside of frustration, focus, and varying shades of amusement.

David plops between them, and his thigh grazes Patrick's. He tries to squish closer to Stevie, and she pushes him back.

"Are you uncomfortable?" Patrick turns toward David a bit, pushing the whole solid line of his thigh against David's. This was a mistake, this whole thing. David should have come up with an excuse not to come. A prior engagement. Dinner with his parents. A Sunrise Bay viewing party. A trans-continental flight.

David gives in when Patrick hands him the popcorn bowl, cradling it like a child and trying to ignore the line of nerves lit up where their legs are pressed together as Patrick queues up the movie.

David focuses on the screen studiously, like he'll be tested on it. Sips his wine, crunches his popcorn, lets the vaguely European fantasy hijinks onscreen take up as much real estate as they can in his mind. It's an easy movie to focus on, funny in a way that means he can see why it's such an icon. Romantic enough that David can't help but be a total sucker for it.

It's not until midway through that things get dire. Wallace Shaw has just laughed his last victorious laugh and keeled over, and Patrick nudges David, taking the mostly-empty popcorn bowl and setting it on the coffee table. He reaches back for the afghan and tugs it from behind their backs, and passes the end to Stevie, so that the three of them are snuggled beneath it, and David is the middle of the coziest little sandwich.

It's a nightmare. He glances at Patrick, who's watching the screen with a little smile, and then he looks back and turns that little smile on David, and David takes a deep breath and turns back to the screen.

It's fine. What's changed, really? That they're warmer now? They aren't cuddling, or anything. Although Patrick looks cuddly to the max in his little blue sweater. It's almost definitely synthetic and remarkably soft for the fact.

David sneaks a glance at Patrick out of the corner of his eye; he's so relaxed, so in his element. David feels like he's never seen Patrick out of his element. Is everything his element? David is struck with an urge — or maybe a quiet desperation — to find the borders of Patrick's comfort zone. To prove that they exist.

David's borders are everywhere. They're under this blanket and along the side of his thigh and at the bottom of his empty glass. His comfort zone is smaller than his body, and so everyone is always rubbing his edges.

But with Patrick, he instinctively minds less than with…a lot of other people. Surely that must mean something. Maybe not something cosmic, but…something.

It gets even worse.

David is focusing as studiously as he can on the movie, doing his best to ignore Patrick's thigh against his, his shoulder against his. Wesley is mostly dead, and David is caught up in the fantasy peril, he _is,_ and then Patrick yawns, pressing his whole palm up to his mouth, and slumps and rests his head against David's bicep.

It's unacceptable. To be that casually touchy with a friend. A coworker. David wants to shove Patrick off and shout that there are rules about how to treat people you don't want to date. He wants to hold him close, wrap an arm around him and whisper and gamble on that…maybe he does.

Rather than doing either of those things, he turns his head slowly to glare at Stevie in total panic. She meets him with an excited little smile. "Yes," she whispers. "Love this for you."

"Don't rush me sonny," the healer guy onscreen says. "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles." _Like having an unrequited crush on the guy sleeping on you,_ David thinks sourly.

"Hmm?" Patrick lifts his head from David's arm to look at him and Stevie, and David immediately misses the warm weight.

"Nothing," David says too quickly. Patrick frowns, and he doesn't say anything but he supports his own head for the rest of the movie.

David knows he's in too deep now, because he wants to tug Patrick back to him. He wants to hold him, and this isn't — normal, for David, is what makes it horrible. He's not used to slowly growing to like people. He's not used to liking people, flat out. Attraction is something he can handle, the invisible line that draws two people together for a night or a week or a month, keeps them in the same bed until they find new beds to fall into.

But this? Getting to know someone, feeling warm in his gut when they smile at him? Wanting to know someone better, and wanting them at the same time? This is new. And to have these feelings for Patrick, who's so buttoned-up and straight-laced, nice and smart and clean? Even if sometimes David thinks… 

Because you don't lean your head on someone's arm if you don't like them, right? 

David loses the whole finale of the movie, trapped in his head with Patrick beside him, warm and soft and sleepy. Imagining things too far and then reeling himself back in — like what if after the movie, Stevie left, and David and Patrick put in another movie and fell asleep sweater-to-sweater on this couch? But no, stop, because Patrick…who knew if he felt even a spark of what David felt? He couldn't risk this, their friendship, their business… 

"So, what did you think?" Patrick asks over the incredibly sappy song rolling in the credits.

"Mm," David says, trying to think of something to show he's been paying attention. "I normally am not a fantasy fan, but young Robin Wright is a gift." God, that makes him sound like he's into Robin Wright, what the fuck is wrong with him.

Patrick's invisible brows raise half a millimeter and his mouth curves with something akin to fondness as Stevie pokes David harshly in the shoulder, no doubt ribbing him for saying something so stupid. It's hard to care when Patrick's expression is making David feel hopeful that maybe, maybe what he feels between them is double-sided.

"That she is," Patrick says. He's alert enough, but he looks sleepy, his eyes ten percent warmer and wider than usual. David wonders what it would be like to have a night like this and then stay; to let Patrick nod off against his shoulder and not wake him.

"We should get going," he says instead.

Patrick follows David and Stevie to the door; Stevie is already halfway down the driveway, having said her goodbye, when Patrick puts a hand on David's elbow. "We should do this again sometime," he says. "I had fun."

For a second David lets himself imagine that this is the end of a date. That he could smile and pout and lean in and Patrick would lean too and they could kiss and hug, that David could leave feeling warmed up inside.

Just for a second. Because this isn't that. "Me too," he says, and despite the bite of just friends when he's so desperate for more, he means it. He'll take friendship with Patrick, movie nights and long days at work, anything he can get.

He turns and joins Stevie, and Patrick waves from the doorway as they back out. David rolls his eyes but he waves back, and it's strange — he does feel a little glow, as if they did have a date. He turns to Stevie, and she's smiling at him just a bit, just out of the corner of her mouth.

 _Don't rush it. Maybe, maybe,_ he thinks all the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all for now! This story caused and then cured a bout of writer's block, and it was so much fun to write! Talk to me on Tumblr @loveburnsbrighter 💖


End file.
